


Every sinner has a future

by sonofahurricane



Category: War Boys (2009)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 15:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonofahurricane/pseuds/sonofahurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David had no more compassion than a bullet, no matter how much he insisted he didn't mean to hurt anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every sinner has a future

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Topeka" by Ludo. Standard disclaimers apply.

They were young, and dumb, and they didn’t hurt anyone by enforcing the law, didn’t hurt anyone by taking the TVs and selling them off on their own. David knew it was the truth, somewhere deep inside his chest, that they couldn’t do any wrong, and if they did, that the wrong would be forgiven. They never meant it. David certainly never really meant it, never meant for it to end the way it did. He tried to say so as they were separated from each other, as the War Boys split up. “We didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he babbled, his mouth still somehow working even as his vision blasted in and out. “We didn’t know, how could we have known.”

They peeled him from George’s lap even though he fought, held onto the fabric of that goddamn Aquaman t-shirt until he thought he would rip another hole in it, until his fingers were too numb to do anything but let go. “You can’t, you can’t,” he stuttered, trying to sit up with muscles that wouldn’t respond, with a hole in his gut that sent earthquakes of pain of a magnitude he couldn’t even imagine.

“It’s gonna be okay, David,” George tried to reassure him, his voice hoarse from shouting and from crying.

“No, no, George!” Instead of shouts, David’s words came out like whispers. “George don’t—they can’t arrest… Greg, can’t, Dad god _damn_ it.” The gurney was lifted and he saw all the police, the flashing lights from their cars, the lights and the white of the ambulance as he was carried towards it.

The paramedics hoisted him inside and that was when the panic settled in, when the adrenaline surge made him sit up. “No, I can’t go, I can’t leave them!” he cried, flailing against the strong arms that fought to keep him down. “I can’t leave them, they don’t know the whole story, it was me, it was me!” He could hear Greg’s voice still echoing in his head— _I’m one of them!_ —and see the gun gingerly resting in Cat’s grip, could hear the cries of the border police and feel George cradling his face. _We killed them. We fucking killed them_. David tasted blood at the back of his throat as he shouted, “George, don’t let them—tell them it was me, _tell them_ that this was my fault.”

_This was my fault_. The coldness of it slammed into his chest, the bodies in the truck weighing enough to rip all the strength out of his arms, sending him back against the gurney, hard, eyes wide and unblinking at the gray metal of the inside of the ambulance. _This was my fault_. He hadn’t meant it. He didn’t know there were people in there, hadn’t thought it was anything more than a stab at his father, a punishment for the crime of not giving David what he wanted, a punishment for making David feel like a failure. Instead a dozen or more people were dead, and it was all his fault. _We fucking killed them._

He couldn’t have known. How was he supposed to know there were illegals in the truck? His dad hadn’t said anything, hadn’t trusted him with the knowledge that it wasn’t TVs. David shook his head slightly, each movement bringing new pain, and felt his mouth begin to move again even as his body went numb. No words came out at first, as one of the faces floating above his head came in close. “What are you saying, kid?”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” It was a whisper, and David doubted he could be heard over the rumble of tires on desert terrain. The face was lifted from his, and the headshake indicated he hadn’t been heard, but David kept mouthing it, like the ceaseless prayer he had read about in that book for English in high school, like if he said the words and they timed up with the last beat of his heart, he wouldn’t have to face what he had done. There certainly was a darkness he would have to face, encroaching in on his vision, spreading over his arms and settling in on his chest like a possessive cat. Everything was suddenly very still, even though he knew they were still moving, even as they flew over a bump and the sirens screamed through the air. _I’m sorry_.

It took seven hours of surgery to remove the bullet, they told him when he woke up. Remove the bullet, pull together his insides, stop the bleeding. It had almost nicked his lung, had torn through all kinds of tissue the way you tore through the stubborn long grass in the desert, stepping on it and crushing new shoots without consideration for what it was—a living thing. Seven hours and three days of unconsciousness afterwards, an induced coma at first. They had almost lost him, he was told, but who would really be missing him if he was lost? No visitors at that time; only family was allowed to visit, and, well.

They had arrested his father, and had denied him bail, not that he had anywhere left to go. No charges were being pressed against the boys at the moment, certainly not while David was still in the hospital. The house was mostly gone. David was mostly gone, by the time they let George in to see him. The boy David loved—boy, goddammit, they weren’t men by any stretch of the imagination—entered the hospital room like one enters a crypt, with baited breath and the expectation that the corpse could move any second. David looked back at him with glassy, medicated eyes and tried to smile, but the muscle loss wasn’t just in his abdomen. George knelt by the bed and grasped David’s hand in both of his as if in prayer. The beep and buzz of the machines spoke for them for a while, answered that first question David dreaded and George never asked— _how are you doing?_

Instead, David asked the first question, a side-step to the other questions he had. “Where’s Greg?”

“With Marta.” George watched his fingers rub over David’s carefully, like the bones in David’s hand would break underneath his touch. “He… he’s not ready yet, he said. To see you.”

David may have well have asked George to punch his healing surgical incisions. “What about you?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level, the question leaving his lips cool like the staple gun he had pressed against them.

George looked up at him fiercely, the careful caresses ceasing. “I waited for you every day,” he snarled. “I sat out there and I waited, hoping maybe someone would get the point, hoping someone would just tell me if you were alive. They called your father but they wouldn’t tell me a word.”

The bullet, the desert grass, David’s questions, George’s face. Hot, rocky sand underneath his hands. David held George’s gaze for a moment, then dropped it like a bomb.

“What about the bodies?” _What about the people we killed._ George dropped his hand with a hiss, like he’d been burned, thrust himself from the bedside and backed up, shaking his head.

“David,” he pleaded, his eyes on the ground.

“What about the bodies?” David repeated, and the machine beeped with his elevated heart rate. The fog from the painkillers was clearing and everything hurt like it was fresh, like it was yesterday. No more compassion than a bullet. He didn’t care that George had been there, had seen them, felt responsible. David had to know.

“The county. They took them. Shipped them back, or buried them here, I don’t know.” George met his eyes again, and David saw the fear in them. Fear of what, he wondered? Fear of him? David nodded, his neck aching, his head swimming now with pain. He leaned heavily against the hospital bed, eyes fighting to stay open.

“Do they haunt you?” he asked. George didn’t answer, didn’t seem like he was going to answer, and David closed his eyes. “I gotta know, George, because whatever they’re doing to you, as soon as I’m sleeping unmedicated, they’ll do to me.”

“It’s not just when you’re sleeping.” George was biting out the words, forcing them out, for David’s sake probably. David opened his eyes, watched the way George’s muscles tensed, the way he flinched like he never flinched at David’s punches. “It’s every time you see a truck. Every time you look at Greg. Every time I look at you. Every siren, every chopper you hear. Cat, looking at her, at my parents. Goddammit. It’s like every breath you’re taking is for them and you can’t seem to get enough because two lungs can’t take care of twelve people.” He wiped at his eyes furiously with the back of his hand.

David studied him for a moment. “Why’d you come?”

George shook his head, stared at his feet, started then stopped then started again. “I’m scared for you, David. I thought you were dead in my arms. I heard the paramedics afterwards, saying you weren’t making any sense in the ambulance, that you were whispering something but they couldn’t understand you. They almost lost you. _I_ almost lost you.”

David blinked at him, once, twice, and then a nurse came in and told George sharply that David needed to be left alone, needed to rest. George nodded, mumbled something to David about seeing him tomorrow, and turned around and left without another word.

Would he even come back? _We didn’t mean to hurt anyone_. Desert grass. The gun, shaking in his hand, limp in Cat’s. Another dose of painkillers, a soft and fuzzy sleep settling over his limbs, a paralysis, a mind wipe. A reboot. Tomorrow was another day. George would be back, maybe Greg with him—probably not. Maybe Cat. Maybe the ghosts. For now, the nurse patted his arm, and told him he had to worry about healing right now, that that was his only concern.

She was wrong, but David fell asleep anyway, and dreamed of open roads and borderless sky. 


End file.
